SPECIAL SECTION/BUSINESS GUIDE: Finding the Perfect Match

Nola Pearce, senior recruiter/account executive with ETS Tech-Ops, sheds some light on the unemployment situation and offers advice to help manufacturers find the right candidates.

Millions of people have lost their jobs in the last year,
and the high unemployment rate has led to some interesting dynamics in the
recruiting landscape. I recently asked Nola Pearce, senior recruiter/account
executive with ETS Tech-Ops, to shed some light on the situation and offer
advice to help manufacturers find the right candidates.

What
impact does the current high unemployment rate have on a company’s recruiting
options?
Right now, what people perceive to be massive downsizing,
layoffs and restructuring across a variety of industries and functions has
resulted in a unique opportunity for certain organizations to top-grade their
staffs in anticipation of gaining market share. I have found that this is
especially important in the organizations with products that have significantly
long product development cycles. These companies may have scaled back 10% on
their workforce, but they’re going to top-grade their staff this year and into
next year to make sure that the development cycle is being taken care of and
ensure success three and five years down the road.

The unemployment rate is obviously higher than it’s been since our grandparents
were around. But when you start dividing it down by either professional segment
or by education, you start to realize that for the people who recruiters
commonly work with-people with bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees-the
unemployment rate is actually significantly lower. For example, right now the
overall rate is around 10%, but if you look at the managerial/professional
segment, which is one-third of the American workforce, it’s 5.4%. Even though
that is higher than it’s been for years (a year ago it was about 2%), it’s
important to take a step back and ask, “Are companies going to be scaling back
on the top 10 or 20% of their workforce, or are they going to make assessments
of where it makes the most sense to scale back?”

Traditionally, recruiters say they don’t look for unemployed people. Obviously,
there have been some significant exceptions to the rule this year. Facts are
facts, and there are a lot of very impressive unemployed people out there now.
If a company has completely gone out of business, then that top 10% performer
is going to be on the street. But if an industry or company is still strong and
scaling back up, that’s a company that I want to identify and help build the
team they need to make sure they can achieve that product development cycle
three and five years down the road.

How
has the Internet impacted the recruiting process?
The biggest impact is that
it’s changed the business focus for recruiters. Up until 10 or 15 years ago, if
your business was in Boise, Idaho, and you wanted a recruiter, you’d call a
recruiter in Boise. At that time, the business was characterized by a
geographic location. With the onset of the Internet, recruiting is commonly
characterized by specific professional niches across a wide geographic area. My
office is in Roanoke, Va., and I recruit nationwide. I also have business
partners, through the MRI network, who are international. I’ve recruited in
China and Europe, for example. Though this was possible in the past, via faxes
and phone, the Internet has made it much easier.

Instead of all of the job boards and resume blasting, what the Internet has
really done is to provide recruiters with a source of additional information to
identify clients who need assistance, as well as what we call passive
candidates. A passive candidate is an individual who comes to work every day,
does their job and their head is in the game. They’re one of the top 10-20%
performers in their company, and they’re not looking to change jobs. Those are
the people I like to speak with, to really get an idea of what they do, what
they’d like to do, and, if they could advance their career, see if they could
gain additional satisfaction while providing a positive impact within another
company. We now have information sources like professional memberships, company
websites and blogs. If a company has just landed a big order or a big project,
and you’re recruiting in that niche, you have ready access to that information.

What
role can/should social media play in a company’s applicant
search?
There are certain social networking sites that have exploded,
such as LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace.
They’ve definitely become additional tools to gather data and build upon the
professional networking process. This has also resulted in the fact that every
person, day in and day out, has thousands and thousands of messages that are
just coming at them-from social networks, e-mails, phone calls and all of that.
In reality, if a person is trying to identify where they want to go in their
career, social networking can actually be a little confusing if they don’t know
how to utilize it. One of the things we do is help utilize those tools to
assure that we’re guiding the person through the process in the most effective
way.

What should companies do to ensure they reach the right
applicant pool?
Identify requirements. You need to know what you’re looking for.
Similar to starting any product development project, you need to know your
marketing requirements and your product specifications. It’s the same process,
except we’re dealing with human beings. You need to be absolutely certain about
the skills and competencies that you’re looking for. Typically, for example, if
a manager needs a product development engineer, they’re going to pull out the
job description from three years ago that
they used to hire Bill Smith. Once they step through it, if they step through
it, they’ll notice that Bill Smith really doesn’t do that anymore. He goes
above and beyond that. These job descriptions, like everything, morph, change
and become outdated. The hiring manager really needs to pay attention to
exactly what they want and where they want that person to go once they get into
the organization.

One of the quotes that we always use is from Henry Ford, who, when someone
asked about the first car he’d built, said, “If I had asked my customer what
they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” One of the things that’s
helpful is to speak with someone who knows what everybody else has been doing
in the industry in the last few years. It gives them the ability to step back
and look at the big picture and say, “Maybe we need a person who utilizes this
type of tool or that type of tool or has used this deposition process or this
type of material or element.”

The second thing is to anticipate candidate expectations. You’re not purchasing
a component or an assembly-human beings are the most important element of your
business, and each of these human beings is going to have wants, needs and
expectations. Anticipate what those are going to be. What do you anticipate the
compensation is going to be for this role? If you are asking a person to pick
up their family and move from St. Louis, Mo., to Rochester, Minn., for example,
what are the things they’re going to need to be taken care of? Make sure that
your company is available to support them through that. Once again, we’re
dealing with human beings, and you have identified a human being with the
background, skills and experience to take you to your next successful product
rollout two years down the road.

Companies can also utilize referral programs. Key successful employees in your
organization are involved in industry associations and leading manufacturing
groups. They know what the company down the street is doing, and they know who
the biggest hitters are. Reenergizing a referral program makes your employees
feel wanted and needed while helping you bring in key performers.

Another option is to maintain relationships
with recruiters in your niche. One of the advantages that brings is we can
identify potential professionals who would be a benefit to a company before the
company knows they need them. Those professionals are very much passive
candidates. If I know a company is breaking into the solar industry or coatings
for medical devices, for example, I might be able to identify a person who may
be willing to have a conversation with the company’s CTO. It gives me the
opportunity to call him and say, “You know, I had a conversation with Joe D and
I really think you guys could benefit from getting to know each other.” This
strong relationship with a recruiter provides the opportunity to continually
identify key professionals who would fit in your organization.

If you are looking for a principle-level engineer, sure, post it and see what
happens. I do think where you’re going to find your key people is through
professional networks, though. The passive candidate, the one whose head is in
the game, they’re not going to be checking Career Builder. They’re working late
because they have a presentation in front of their CEO.

Right now, what we have in our country is 80
million Baby-Boomers who are nearing retirement. They’re being replaced by 40
million Gen-Xers. Either way, with the economy up, down or sideways, we are
approaching a critical shortage of talent, especially in the high-tech
industry. If you’re looking for an A-level player to move into your
organization, where you’re going to get your leverage is making sure that you
have a tight professional network at all times, no matter if you have current
needs or not. Because when you do have that need, that type of professional
network can make or break your organization when you need that key person right
away.

What
missteps should companies avoid during the recruiting
process?
Get the timing right. If you
start recruiting too early and leave your candidate hanging before you can
actually write an offer, you don’t leave a positive view of the organization in
the candidate’s mind. If you start actively recruiting and getting them through
the interview, and then it takes a month or two for the offer to be written, if
he’s the right candidate, he’s no longer available.

If you start too late, you’re going to limit your pool of candidates to people
who are currently unemployed. Say, for example, I’m talking to a hiring manager
who needs a person on board within four weeks. I step them through a hiring
timeline. If that person is currently employed, they’re going to need to give
two weeks notice. Give me a week to do the recruiting and I can come up with
two or three key candidates. That gives you a week to do a telephone interview,
fly them in for an in-person interview, do your personality profile and
reference checks, extend an offer to them, and have them accept. It’s just not
practical. You really need to step through that process to understand what it
takes to bring a person on board.